


The Farewell Tour

by TheSaddleman



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Farewells, No Angst, Old Age, Pears, Post-Episode: s09e12 Hell Bent, Romance, Spoilers for Episode: s09e10 Fear The Raven, Spoilers for Episode: s09e12 Hell Bent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-06-09 12:46:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6907858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSaddleman/pseuds/TheSaddleman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara is ready to return to Trap Street to meet her final destiny. But first, she needs to visit an old friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Farewell Tour

**Author's Note:**

> This is not set in the continuity of "Time Bomb" or "The Big Red Button". It is an alternate idea of how Clara and the Doctor's final meeting might play out ... across time.
> 
> And yes, a recently announced companion does make a cameo appearance here. Brave or what?

The Doctor sat at his table, nursing a glass of milk. A few lifetimes back, it might have been scotch. A few lifetimes before that, Irn Bru. Before that, Turkish coffee.

It was often amusing, if occasionally annoying, how the Doctor’s palate usually changed with each regeneration. Foods that he loved in one life, he loathed in the next. Except jelly babies. Nature’s perfect confection, he was pleased that every one of his lives had kept a taste for jelly babies.

Every one of them. A perfect record.

The Doctor felt a twinge in his left arm as he reached forward to check the psychic paper. There had been a lot of twinges of late, even more so then when he first regenerated into his current body. It was probably fitting that this body would begin elderly. If he’d been regenerated into a young, strapping man again, as he often had been in the past, it might have been akin to torture that this body would be a young one, holding promise for the future.

The Doctor looked at the psychic paper to make sure he had the location and date correct. _Jim’s Café, Bath, May 20, 2016_. He wasn’t sure why she chose that date; probably just random to keep the Time Lords at bay.

They’d long since agreed that arranged meetings were for the best. At first, she had tried encountering him at random; occasionally she’d arrive during the midst of some crisis. They’d have time for a quick chat and a hug, and then he had to be off fighting an alien invasion and she had to move on; she’d often offered to help, but the Doctor would have none of it. It wasn’t worth the risk of the Time Lords catching up with her to bring her back to Trap Street. Sometimes centuries would pass between their meetings, never more than one per life. Even so, the Doctor had come to look forward to them.

He quietly heard someone clear her throat behind him. He turned in his chair to see … Clara. His Clara. Still young, vibrant, beautiful as always. But every time he saw her, just a little bit sadder. He stood up and embraced Clara in a bear hug that lifted her off the ground. He might be old, but he still had strength where it counted. 

“My impossible girl.”

“Hello, Doctor.”

“Please, sit. Can I order you anything?”

“Just a glass of water, please,” Clara said. The Doctor motioned to a waiter and a glass was duly poured, though she didn’t touch it.

“It’s good to see you,” the Doctor said.

“I see you went a bit older with your new body, even a bit older than the Curator.”

“Well, it was either this or Male Model and I figured I might stand a better chance with the ladies if I chose this one,” the Doctor joked. The Curator had been an earlier life, one during which he’d actually retired for a while. He’d gotten a bonus during that life — not only did Clara make her regular visit, but he got to meet a younger version of her (one whose heart was still beating) when he was placed in charge of the Undergallery. It had inspired him to be a teensy bit naughty and give his bowtie-wearing self a preview of the future. Of course the younger Doctor was forced to forget the details when the timeline rearranged itself; Clara had likewise forgotten meeting the Curator. But it was fun and gave the old boy a chance to enjoy some of the awful puns that incarnation had become infamous for.

“So Doctor, please tell me. How are you doing? Are you well?”

The Doctor wanted to tell her the truth, that no — he was far from well. He was an old man, after all. Many of the senses that often got him out of scrapes no longer functioned. His hearing was also not the best. And like many old people develop a sixth sense that their story is soon to end, the Doctor had realized his book was past the final chapter and was about midway through the index. But thank Gallifrey his memories were intact. All of them, including the ones of her.

So instead of telling Clara the truth, the Doctor gave her the edited highlights. Of some of his more recent adventures, of his reunion with family he hadn’t seen since before the Time War. He’d even made peace with someone he’d been feuding with for millennia. He didn’t tell Clara that that person was Ashildr; he knew this Clara was travelling with an earlier version of the immortal Viking and he didn’t want to mess up the timeline.

“Now, Clara, how are you?”

“Same old, same old, just Clara and Ashildr in the TARDIS,” Clara joked. It was a running gag that she’d often just say this, because from her perspective, it had been only an hour or so since she’d visited him in his previous life.

You see, Clara had decided the time had come for her to finally meet her destiny, to die on Trap Street and set history flowing properly again. She had spent centuries travelling with Ashildr and had truly lived everything she wanted to live. She was tired and the time had come to rest.

But she couldn’t rest, not yet. There was one thing she wanted to do, both so she could rest, and so the Doctor could as well.

There was something else that had become a tradition between them. She didn’t mind repeating it, even if she’d done so many times over the past few days from her perspective. From the Doctor’s, it was the first time in hundreds, sometimes thousands of years. He needed to hear it. He wanted to hear it. From her.

“Clara, please tell me again what you said to me in the Cloisters?”

***

Fast-forward to the end of Clara Oswald’s life, and backwards in the Doctor’s.

The Doctor was well into his twelfth life (if you didn’t count the one who fought the Time War). His scruffy grey hair mirrored scruffy, angry-looking eyebrows. But there was nothing angry about the eyes underneath those brows that looked deep into Clara’s own eyes with immense sadness as he realized his next statement would not change anything. 

“Clara, let me fix this. There must be a — ”

“No, Doctor, we have discussed this. It’s time for me to rest.” She took off her Gallifreyan robe, revealing the same outfit she had first worn so many years ago on Trap Street. The fact it still fit wasn’t a surprise — let’s hear it for immortality — though Gallifreyan technicians had been forced to restore it so that it matched precisely how it looked back in the twenty-first century as it had been sitting in a box in Clara’s TARDIS for about five hundred years. They’d also somehow made her hair look the same way as it did back then, which was a relief given that over the course of her centuries of travel she’d had the occasional unwanted trim.

“I can’t accept that you want to throw everything away.”

“Because it’s time, Doctor,” Clara said, her eyes sparkling. “Doctor, I have lived long enough. And I’m tired and I owe the universe a debt. I owe you a debt. And I need to repay it.”

The Doctor put his hands on her shoulders. “You don’t have to. We have all the time in the universe. My memories are restored now. I want you by my side.” 

The restoration of the Doctor’s memories had been accidental; literally a variation of the bump on the head that cured so many amnesiacs in so many bad television sitcoms. It wasn’t quite a bump, but a mishap with the TARDIS console had resulted in the Doctor being injured to the point where Bill, his current companion, had thought he was going to die or rejuvenate or whatever the hell Time Lords do when TARDIS consoles explode.

It had been close, and the Doctor very nearly felt the surge of energy that signalled the end of one life and the start of the next. But instead he felt something else — the surge of memory. Memory of a lost friend; no, more than just a friend, a young woman he had fallen in love with to a degree that he had threatened all of time and space just to save her from her own destiny.

Bill had encouraged the Doctor to seek Clara out, despite his misgivings. With the return of his memories, the Doctor had also remembered exactly why he’d allowed them to be partially erased in the first place. But Bill, as always, was right: he had to see Clara again.

It took some effort and so many false leads it made tracking down the Key to Time look like a game of checkers. But they’d managed it. And, such is the case with all great romances, it transpired that Clara had been seeking him out, too. 

To go with her back to Gallifrey. Because it was time. 

Ashildr by this time had chosen to live on a beautiful garden world known as an orphan planet where she had countless children to look after, children whose parents had died in a massive war between two star systems. After the war ended, both sides dedicated a planet to caring for the children, teaching them and finding them homes. Ashildr volunteered to help. 

And Clara was now alone. And it was time.

The Doctor had fought the idea of returning to Gallifrey. But Clara had pleaded with him. “Please, I’m ready but I don’t want to do this alone. I want you with me.”

Back in the present, Clara entered the extraction chamber room, the Doctor holding her hand tightly as they did so, not wanting to let go.

Clara turned around and faced the Doctor as technicians prepared to open the portal to Trap Street. 

“I made a promise to Danny Pink,” Clara said. “You made a promise to a number of people. We have to keep our promises. But does it need to be said? You know how I feel about you. How I’ve always felt.”

“And I’ve felt exactly the same,” the Doctor said with a sad smile.

“I need you to know something. We will meet again.”

“What do you mean?”

“I want you to move on. Your memories are back, but remember what you did the last time. The hell you went through. I remember this, and I could only rest if I knew you were OK,” Clara said. The Doctor caught the change in tense and raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“Clara, what did you do?”

“Call it a farewell tour. I visited … will visit you in the future. Every one of you. To see that you’re OK and so we could be together again. For a little while.”

“What?”

“I was going to just do it a few times. Like when you next regenerate. But I found I couldn’t stop. I needed to know you were OK, not just tomorrow, but many tomorrows from now. At least once in every life you have to come, at some point I will be there. In some way, Doctor, I will always be with you.”

“But you are here now, which means...”

Clara nodded, tears filling her eyes. “I finished the tour.”

***

In the café, the older Doctor gazed at Clara’s large brown eyes as they discussed relatively meaningless topics, now that her loving recitation of her beautiful words in the Cloisters had been repeated. The two were holding hands. He was glad of the company; he hadn’t had a companion for a long time and while he was too old to truly be lonely, he still appreciated having someone to talk to. Especially her. Anyone looking on would probably think it was a young woman talking to her grandfather. If they only knew, the Doctor mused.

They talked for a long time. And then, as she always did, Clara said, “My time is up, and I have to go.” (She’d explained long ago that the Time Lords were still pursuing her, so she was limited in how long she could stay in one place. And as this farewell tour was also playing fast and loose with the laws of time, she couldn’t stay long.)

She leaned over and kissed the Doctor lightly on the cheek. “I’ll see you again, Doctor.”

“Clara, no you won’t.”

Clara’s eyes widened. She did a quick mental count and gasped.

“Oh, no. There has to be something…”

“I suppose there is. They offered me yet another regeneration cycle, but I declined.”

“What! No, you can’t leave us. We need you. I need you. You call them back right now and say yes.”

“Clara, I am so old now that even the thrill of travelling with companions has faded. There is literally nothing more for me to do. And this has been the case for several lives. Yes, I have some adventures, make a few new friends now and again … but it’s not the same. Everything has its time and everything dies. And it’s my turn. And it’s time I let you go, too.”

“But your eyes. They’re still so young,” Clara said as she wrapped her arms around the white-haired heavyset man who she still loved more than anyone in the universe, her own eyes filling with impossible tears. “You’ll never look any different to me, Doctor.” 

The Doctor smiled at a foggy memory of a dream — or maybe it really happened? — when he’d told Clara she’d always look the same to him. Turned out to be a premonition. Clara would never age. The Doctor, on the other hand…

“Clara, I want you to know this has been so special to me. Seeing you … it’s been a comfort. And a joy. Always.”

Clara pulled out of the hug. “For me, too. I promised you … or I will promise you … that I’d always see you again.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

“What do you mean?”

“Clara, I know you called this your farewell tour. I know why you’re doing this. You told me so long ago. But you don’t have to go back right away. Stay with me, or go back to Ashildr and travel more. Don’t tie yourself to a madman in a box.”

Clara smiled and put her hand up to the Doctor’s face. “I wish I could. But my time is finally up. I promised myself that when I reached … the final you, that that would be the end.”

“How do you know I’m not lying to you? Maybe I’ve been given a new regeneration cycle. Maybe I just don’t die at all — I’ve never been certain what rebooting myself for billions of years in the Confession Dial might have done to me.”

“I know. But my mind is made up.”

There was no changing that. The Doctor smiled. “Yes, boss,” he said. And then he added: “Clara, may I make a request of you?”

“Of course, anything.”

“When you return. When you see … me … younger me. I want you to tell him something…”

***

Clara nodded, tears filling her eyes. “I finished the tour.”

The Doctor took a moment to let that sink in. He knew he was never going to live forever. He knew some day it had to end. But that didn’t make hearing the proof of it any easier.

“How do I make out?”

Clara laughed. “Didn't River teach you anything? But there is one thing. You … the final you … asked me to give you a message.”

“Really? What did — he?” Clara nodded with a smile. “What did _he_ say?”

Despite the fact Clara knew her story was about to end, she couldn’t help but let her eyes twinkle and she looked up into the face that meant so much to her, even among all the others she’d seen. “Actually, he said two things.”

“OK?”

“The first: _Pears suck_.”

The Doctor burst into laughter. Clara smiled. That was the reaction she hoped she’d get. Better to end on a happy note. In fact they laughed so hard it made the technicians look at each other uncertainly and a guard let her hand float near her sidearm, just in case.

The Doctor's eyes were still twinkling when he said, “OK, good to know my common sense remains intact to the end. So what was the other thing?”

Clara Oswald stepped in close to the Doctor’s personal space and took his lapels, one in each fist.

The Doctor was momentarily startled but only for a moment, and he found himself instinctively putting his hands on her shoulders. Clara smiled a smile that filled the room as the portal to Trap Street opened in the wall behind her. 

It was the end, but the moment had been prepared for.

“ _Kiss her, you idiot_.”

**Author's Note:**

> The idea of Clara going ahead in time and saying hello to every future Doctor got stuck in my head and this is my way of getting it out! Hopefully it's interesting. I chose not to make the final Doctor The Curator in part due to the fact a number of recent fanfics have already featured him in this "last Doctor" role so I made him not the final Doctor just for variety.
> 
> Part of the sequence where the Doctor is trying to convince Clara not to go to the extraction chamber is adapted from an early draft of "Time Bomb".
> 
> I decided to give Bill a cameo as I'm certain if and when Clara returns to the show, Bill will be the companion at that time so I figured I might as well. Obviously I left characterization to a minimum given how little we know of her right now (May 2016). I may come back to this story and do some revising at a later date once we see more of Bill on TV.
> 
> And for the record, I happen to like pears. I don't know what the Doctor is going on about...


End file.
